Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution

Sherry Johnson

Publication Year: 2011

Drawing historical climatology, environmental history, and Cuban and American colonial history, Sherry Johnson innovatively integrates the history of the Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic world during the Age of Revolution (1750-1800) with the period's extreme weather patterns and finds that weather-induced environmental crises played an inextricable and largely unacknowledged role in charting the course of this period as a critical juncture in Atlantic world history. Johnson reviews recent scientific discoveries in paleoclimatology and, combining them with archival materials, identifies an historic weather pattern--in particular, a fifty-year warming trend--that lead to a cycle of severe drought alternating with an increased number of hurricanes, what we know now as the El Nino/La Nina weather cycle. By superimposing this history of natural disasters over the conventional timeline of socio-political and economic events in Caribbean colonial history--involving such major themes as mercantalism, imperial business, rebellion, and repression--Johnson argues for an alternate chronology based on environmental and weather events in which the signal events of the Age of Revolution are seen as consequences of ecological crisis. In particular, Johnson finds that the the general adoption of free trade by the European powers in the Americas, esp. in the key imperial outposts in the Caribbean and the North Atlantic basin, was catalyzed by a recognition of the harsh realities of food scarcity and the complementary needs of local colonists reeling from a series of unrelenting natural disasters. The environmental crisis, and Spain's slow response in assisting its colonists, also raised levels of resentment on the island against the motherland, adding to slowly building revolutionary sentiments.

Cover

Contents/Figures and Maps

Acknowledgments

During the completion of this book, I have incurred many debts, both
personal and professional. I am grateful for the funding I received from
several institutions, including the Lydia Cabrera Award Committee of the
Conference on Latin American History; the Jay I. Kislak Foundation, Inc.;...

ONE: Cursed by Nature

Climate Change! Global Warming! El Niño and La Niña!
These phrases, now part of our daily vocabulary, stir emotions
and prompt reactions ranging from fear, to anger, to
a feeling of helplessness in the face of impending disaster. For the past
several years, the Caribbean, the southeastern United States, and the Gulf...

TWO: Be Content with Things at Which Nature Almost Revolted

The governor of Cartagena de Indias, Don Ignacio de
Sola, was a conscientious bureaucrat. As the ranking official
of the South American city that was the departure point
for Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa’s scientific expedition of 1735–46,...

THREE: It Appeared as If the World Were Ending

The end of the Seven Years’ War in Europe and in the
Americas brought momentous political and territorial
changes. Great Britain emerged as the winner, while her
primary rival, France, was vanquished. Spain was dragged into the war
because of her commitment to her French relatives and suffered a major...

FOUR: The Violence Done to Our Interests

At 9:00 a.m. on 10 October 1773, during the height of
hurricane season, a meeting was convened onboard the
fragata de correos (mail frigate) El Quirós. The participants
contrasted sharply, from the grizzled, veteran captains of the coastal and...

FIVE: In a Common Catastrophe All Men Should Be Brothers

By the summer of 1776, the disenchantment so pronounced
in the correspondence between Captain General de la Torre
and treasury official Eligio de la Puente was symptomatic of
the problems that would compel a new approach toward colonial affairs....

SIX: The Tomb That Is the Almendares River

In late June 1791, St. Augustine captain Don Antonio de Alcántara
sailed into Havana harbor at the helm of his schooner,
the Santa Catalina.1 A decade earlier, his arrival would have
been unthinkable because his port of origin was in British hands, and...

SEVEN: So Contrary to Sound Policy and Reason

At the end of the eighteenth century, the warm climate
anomaly subsided as suddenly as it began. By 1800, temperatures
plunged to a level not experienced since the
1740s.1 Hurricanes continued to make landfall in Cuba, including one in...

APPENDIX 1. A Chronology of Alternating Periods of Drought and Hurricanes in Cuba and the Greater Caribbean, Juxtaposed with Major Historical “Events,” 1749–1800

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